Fuji on the street

On the weekends there is a photographer who sets up his equipment in front of an antique shop downtown and makes portraits of people. Not too unusual except he shoots with very old box cameras and processes them the same way photographs were processed many years ago. I can't explain the exact process because I'm not really familiar with it but the photos look as if they were taken in the early days of photography. 

 I mention this because as I was walking around downtown yesterday the photographer was in the process of photographing a model...I wandered over and talked for a while and took a photo of the model on the set with the Fuji X100S...just natural light in the shade...this little camera takes wonderful shots and the more I use it and learn the controls the more i love it.

 

Model, downtown Melbourne.

Fuji X100s

I've been playing around with a new camera, the Fuji X100s, a sweet little mirrorless retro looking camera. It has a fixed 23mm lens on a cropped sensor which translates roughly to a 35mm on a full frame, produces wonderful photographs, is as light as a feather and great for a daily walk around or travel camera. Here are a few samples from the local streets. 

Mural on the wall of an antique shop. 

Mural on the side of a bar.

Alley with shops and cafés.

It was hot outside, nuff said.

The Bald Strawberry café. Check out the vintage vinyl and turntable. Sweet.

Vintage vinyl at the Bald Strawberry Café, which features gluten free meals and pastries. Customers can choose the record they want to hear and give it a spin on the turntable. The Doors were playing when I went in and some customers told me that Jim Morrison lived around the corner when he was young. I didn't know that.

Puerto Rico

Just got back from a long weekend in Puerto Rico. I had been there many years ago but it was for a working week and didn't get a chance to do the  'touristy' thing. This time I did spend an enjoyable day in Old San Juan and half of a very rainy day in the rain forest. Ate some very good food, talked with a lot of really nice local folks and had fun time. I did manage to get a few pictures, these were taken in Old San Juan.

Lost in the Past

Every once in a while I get to looking at photographs I took a long time ago and haven't done anything with....no post processing or sharing    ...they're just sitting there, lonely, forgotten, on one of the hard drives attached to the computer. I was doing just that on this rainy afternoon and came across a few that peaked my interest. Like this one from my 2010 trip to Vietnam. I'm not exactly sure what or where this is, it's in a folder named 'Hanoi and Ha Long Bay' so it's somewhere in the northern part of the country. One of the lessons I get from this is I have to name my files and folders better.  Just learned the this is a temple honoring King Dinh Tien Hoang who established the first centralized feudal state in Vietnam in 968.   It's located in Ninh Binh provence.

Practice

Some personal work for practice...the colors of this little shop make it hard to miss when driving past. I've had the urge to photograph it for a while and I have an image in my head that includes a small boy in tattered clothes with a cane pole standing in front of the shop looking at the 'closed' sign. But I didn't have a model so I went there one evening to get an idea of how the shot might come out. I was set up on a tripod with a wide angle lens waiting for the sun to set when the owner of the shop pulled in and angrily chased me away. Said it was his private property and didn't want me to take any pictures. He was quite angry, and a bit scary so I left. I did take a few test shots before he got there so I didn't feel too bad about it.​                                       I made a lage print of the photograph and the next day went back to the shop and gave the print to him along with an apology for not getting permission before photographing. We kissed and made up (well, that's not exactly how it went) but I now have his permission to do the shot with a model. All's well that.........

I did a fair amount of post production on the photograph mainly to clean up stuff next to and on the building, to bring out the color and did a little reflection on the parking lot to cover up how dirty it looked. The place used to be a car repair shop and there's a lot of oil and grease stain on the lot.​